


Being Kinder To Myself

by Robertdoc



Category: WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Awesome Wanda Maximoff, Episode 1x09: The Series Finale, F/M, Guilt, Leave Wanda Maximoff Alone, POV First Person, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Speculation, Spoilers, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29869833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robertdoc/pseuds/Robertdoc
Summary: SPOILER ALERTWhen Wanda's pain over losing Vision and the kids finally fades, the pain of all the damage she caused to keep them in Westview, all the people she inflicted with her own grief - and of yet another broken promise to never inflict such pain on others again - is the next to crush her.But for the first time, it isn't Vision or terrorists or a super team to pull her back and remind her she doesn't have to be the villain the world - and the Darkhold - expects her to be. This time it's the least likely person - herself. Or rather, the astral projection of her new Scarlet Witch self that introduces herself after her latest guilt ridden nightmare.A [mostly] first person Wanda POV story that offers one last attempt to let Wanda pick herself back up, remember her greatest strength isn't magic but in trying again and again to do better [even after failing over and over again] - and for once, draw comfort instead of grief and guilt from herself [even a herself that's now a being foretold to end the world - and which the MCU STILL wants us to spend yet another year fearing for her finally going overboard]
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision (mentioned)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Being Kinder To Myself

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned above, major spoilers for the season finale and earlier - and like all my other fics, speculation, some meta commentary and hope against hope for Wanda's future. It may also be kind of a mix of my last three stories - especially the first one and its "Wanda gets inspired by her own astral projections" premise - but if we have to fear for the next year that Dr. Strange 2 may well rejigger WandaVision's basic "Wanda undoes fabric of reality & possibly goes unstable to get her family back" premise, I can rejigger an old premise of my own.

I do what I should have done at the beginning.

I build a real place for myself in this reality. I put it and myself far away from any human mind. So whenever it’s all too much and I can’t hold in the pain, memories or magic anymore, I’m too far away to hurt anyone else with it. Control anyone else.

Torture anyone else.

Eventually, there are several straight days at a time when I don’t break down and cry over him. Over them. Over everything.

Then there are several straight days at a time where I don’t break down and cry because I can’t feel anything. Then there are several days at a time where I can feel everything, remember everything, and feel something other than pain over feeling and remembering anything.

I start letting myself feel the…hope of our last minutes together in Westview. I start letting myself feel something than pain over the fact that I actually let him….let them…go. And when I don’t, it gets easier and faster to stop myself each time, before I lose myself completely.

Maybe it’s easier because I’m far enough away from it now. Maybe it’s easier because I know no one will be hurt but me if I lose myself again. Maybe it’s just as simple as realizing that every passing day without them is…just a little bit easier to get used to.

If I had waited just a few more days, weeks or months before going to S.W.O.R.D…maybe so much would have been different. For all my abilities – old and new – if I merely had the ability to be by myself first, for longer than a few weeks when I came back…maybe so much wouldn’t have happened.

But this time is different. This time I gave myself time. Time alone, time to let time go by, time to feel everything I couldn’t let myself feel…time to let it settle into myself, like cancer slowly starting to go into remission. Instead of merely passing my disease on to everyone around me.

A disease which could create as well as destroy…before the creations had to be destroyed too.

But eventually, there are strings of days where that fact doesn’t crush me. Doesn’t make me cry out into a wilderness where no one can pay the price for it. Doesn’t fill me with nothing but the worst when it passes, or give me nothing to hope for before the cycle begins again.

Because I took the time and solitude I needed to let the entire cycle – not just the ugliest parts – run through me.

I do what I should have done the first time.

And then when the worst of it is nearly manageable…all that’s left after is the memories of how I didn’t do this the first time.

If I had, I would have been here a lot sooner.

If I had, I wouldn’t be fighting my worst impulses – or at least the best of my worst impulses – to leave the woods, find a TV or computer, let myself catch up on how the people of Westview are recovering…or aren’t…and spiral accordingly.

If I had, I never would have had…them. I wouldn’t be fighting the urge to drown myself in the memories of their voices every minute, then every hour, then every day.

If I had, I wouldn’t have the book…the witch…to dive myself into. To do so on every day that diving into everything else isn’t so easy.

If I had, I wouldn’t be learning so much about who and what I’m supposed to be now. Regardless of how hard it is to still remember who I was. Who I still am.

If I did this the first time, I wouldn’t have that distraction now. I wouldn’t have resorted to so many worse distractions then.

If I had done this the first time, it might have been a little easier when the nightmares of Vision’s first death stopped playing on a loop every time I slept.

If I had done this the first time, then when those nightmares finally let up…the new ones wouldn’t have started.

***************************

They’re choking. Always choking.

They can’t breathe. Because for so long when I thought of Vision, I couldn’t breathe. But I gave myself an escape from it – not them.

And I wasn’t even the one who finally freed them from it. _She_ did. Just to prove a point about who their torturer really was.

And when I couldn’t face any of it _again_ – I let them choke again anyway.

And then even when I tried to free them from the Hex, I couldn’t finish it. Because it would have meant the end of my family.

A family I ended hours later anyway. And it was only by luck and quick learning that such a delay didn’t result in utter catastrophe. More than all the other ones I caused.

It wouldn’t have been the first time either.

I had so many other horrors to consume me, it only took until now for this one to hit me. The one in which if I had just killed Vision like he wanted from the beginning, before we ever got to Wakanda…before Thanos got there…billions never would have been dead for five years.

Then Hayward might never have dismantled him. Then three other real heroes might never have died permanently.

Then Westview never would have happened. Then Billy and Tommy wouldn’t have happened. Then Agatha wouldn’t have happened.

And then the only one who would have been choked against their will, without relief or mercy, by the greatest pain imaginable…would have been me.

The same pain that made me create Westview…made me inflict that same pain on everyone around me I didn’t create. Everything I felt that made my life so unbearable, I willingly – and occasionally knowingly – let everyone else but three imaginary people and one witch feel too.

And I didn’t care to see it until the villain made me.

Until one of the villains of Westview made me.

_“Heroes don’t torture people…”_

And they don’t do it more than once. They don’t work with genocidal robots. Allow acts of terror that destroy a team, and then destroy an entire universe, to happen.

They don’t swear over and over to themselves that they’ll never cause such pain again….and then do it anyway when they can’t live with some of their own. Some that, as horrible as it is, still pales to the pain of billions across the universe…and then that of mere thousands all around me…inflicted by me in return.

They may not be choking on it anymore in reality. But they always are in my nightmares. And if they are in my nightmares, then surely they are in theirs. In all the countless nightmares I created for them and left them with while I’m roaming free out here…

_“Heroes don’t torture people…”_

Heroes also aren’t witches prophesized to end the world. Or people that ended worlds long before uncovering such prophecies.

_“Don’t let him make you the villain!”_

_“Maybe I already am.”_

“NO!!!”

************************************

When the nightmare in my dreams is over, I run out of the cabin and collapse near the lake. Then I do what I’ve done every other time I’ve felt like this since I got here.

I do what I did that first day in Westview. Cry out and let my magic spread out all around me when I do. Only this time, like all the other times since I got here, no one else is around to inflict my suffering on.

But I’m out here in the first place – tonight and in general – because nothing will make up for the one time I didn’t care about that.

My crying spell, and whatever other spells I’m letting out, doesn’t last as long as the others I’ve had here. Each one has lasted just a little bit shorter than the last, though nowhere near short enough. None of that was enough to stop the nightmares tonight, though. None of it might ever be enough to stop them.

It certainly won’t stop the other nightmares going on tonight because of me. Because of Westview, Wakanda, Lagos, Sokovia…or anywhere else I’ve ever ruined with what I am. Who I am.

What I’ve always been even before I became someone destined to finish off the world. Someone always destined to be called a villain.

And the only ones who never once saw me as a villain…I killed. Twice in one case.

And another one, I tossed out of town and gave her powers on top of her own loss. Now who knows what I put on top of her own nightmares as well.

I should have stayed a little longer to see if she was really okay. Maybe I should have gone with her instead of coming here. I certainly should have gone with her before Agatha took me away from her. Maybe if I hadn’t thrown away the right to ask for help from her, I could have.

Maybe if I hadn’t thrown away so much else. But I did.

No apologies can ever be enough. But here I am, saying them while crying the last of my tears anyway.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…” I keep repeating to nothing but the water below me. To no one else that will listen. To no one that will ever hear them and deserves to hear them. To no one that would ever absolve me or forgive me if they did. No one who should.

But I say it again. If that’s all I can do, I will gladly do that little. Pretend it does any good or says anything good about me. Yet there are so many worse forms of pretending….

“I’m sorry…”

_“Why?”_

Wait.

I know that voice. Of course I would, since its mine. But I wasn’t the one who used it…

I look down at my reflection in the lake. But now…it’s not entirely mine.

It looks more like...the _other_ me.

But I didn’t...I know I didn’t. I touch my head and I don’t feel a helmet on it, so I couldn’t have turned into her. But then…

I look back down on my reflection, which more clearly looks like me now. Except now it’s not just me in the reflection.

Then I look up and have my answer. One answer on top of many more questions.

I back up when I see her – me? – now floating above the lake. Floating towards me as I keep backing up, before realizing it’s useless.

I knew it was possible. I’ve been reading for the last several days on how to make it possible. I hadn’t actually succeeded in making it possible when I tried. But like everything else, I could only do this by accident and with no regard for anything else too.

Creating an astral projection of me – the Scarlet Witch me – is pretty low on the list of unforeseen accidents. That should feel more comforting than it is right now. But at least instead of feeling terror or guilt, I’m mostly confused.

I wanted this to happen so she – me – could study that book while I kept putting the rest of my life back together. I didn’t intend for her to come out in the middle of my latest breakdown. I didn’t intend her to actually ask me any questions, or come to me like she wanted to talk to me…

Talk to me about what…?

“Why?” she asked again when she landed in front of me. “Why are you sorry?”

Oh. That. So instead of dealing with this new issue, it was back to the old one I couldn’t handle. Enough to create a whole new being all over again.

At least this time it was just me.

As if that made the last time any better. And if she was me, she would know that already without asking me.

“You don’t know?” I asked her – me – in a flash of anger.

“Of course I do,” she – me – said, as if this was remotely normal. “You hate what you did to Westview. But why?”

“You know why,” I said with more anger to…myself. Who would know why better than anyone. But I guess if I was doing this to myself, it was no wonder I wouldn’t make it easy. Not easy enough to get out of saying it out loud.

“I hurt all those people. I hurt them the way I still hurt every day. It hurts so much…so how could I have given all that pain to them too?” I nearly sobbed again. “But I’ve been hurting people for _years_ …over and over in worse ways than the last, and _that_ was the worst…THAT was the worst! I killed people, killed the Avengers and killed the universe for five years, and THAT was the worst!”

“Why?” my other self had the nerve to ask again.

“Because after all that, I did it again anyway! Agatha was right! Hayward was right! I’m not the hero…I’ve never been the hero…”

I prepared for another crying jag that would hopefully only include one me. If this other me was just going to watch and ask the same questions, I really didn’t need an audience. I’ve had enough of audiences watching me hurt myself…

“Then why are you sorry?” witch me nearly pushed me over the edge asking again…until I looked up at her. Until she finally elaborated.

“Heroes don’t torture people. But villains don’t wish with everything they are that they didn’t. Not like you. And villains are never sorry for it. So if you’re the villain, why are you sorry?”

For a moment, I was both afraid and hopeful that this sounded more like Vision than any me. Using logic and reason to get to the most emotional conclusions. Assuring me I wasn’t evil. Leading me to some kind of path that would make me see myself the way he saw me, whether it was really true or not…

But this person in front of me didn’t morph into…Vision 4.0. It still looked like me. Sounded like me. Yet she was looking at me in a way I’ve never seen myself look when I look in a mirror.

Looking like she wanted to pardon me. To ease my pain.

If I made the witch version of myself appear, just to make myself feel better…surely there was something wrong with that somewhere. There had to be.

“Not being the villain doesn’t mean what I did wasn’t evil,” I recovered to tell myself – both of us – the harder truth. To face it head on before I let more evil happen, for once.

“Maybe not,” the Scarlet Witch me admitted. “Doesn’t mean all those other things you did weren’t evil too. Let’s face it, if most of the world didn’t think you weren’t evil before, they do now…and the Avengers that are left have better things to do than clean up after you this time. Hell, there’s a whole book back there that says you’re gonna end the world anyway because I’m here!”

This was far less helpful, but far more familiar to hear and to live with. From myself and people who weren’t my family.

With this, I knew what to expect. With this, I knew what was coming and what I would feel. What I had to feel because I’d lost the right to feel anything else.

“So if the entire world, the entire universe, insists over and over again that you’re nothing but a villain…then why haven’t you made it official already? Why are you here instead of causing more pain and ruining the world, like everyone _and_ you think you’re supposed to? Why aren’t you doing that to everyone, instead of still feeling so sorry you hurt _anyone_?”

I…

“Okay, let’s back up. Why didn’t you just let Agatha take me? You didn’t want these powers, you didn’t want to face what you’d done or say goodbye to them…which meant you should have let Agatha become me. So why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t!” I yelled out before I understood why. “Whatever she would have done with that power…I couldn’t let her do it!”

“Even if it meant sealing their fate,” the witch reminded. “And when that fate came, after everything you did to keep it from happening….when it did, you didn’t even flinch. You didn’t make one last episode to stop it, you didn’t cry when you said bye to the kids for the last time…you even felt some small measure of hope when you let Vision die again.”

“He didn’t die…” I corrected as my voice nearly gave out again. “That Vision was never real…”

“Which didn’t make it any easier to let him go. But you did. Without hesitating once, unlike every other time you almost lost him in Westview. So how did you follow through this time?”

“I couldn’t…” I said again, with far less anger. “I’d done enough trying to keep him…”

“So you let go. And not just because you didn’t think you deserved to keep him, am I right?”

“I didn’t…” I told the truth anyway.

“Maybe, maybe not. And maybe too much happened because you didn’t do it much earlier. Just like those other times. So why did you do it at all anyway? If you couldn’t do it before, why bother to do it at all?”

“I had to…” I admitted. “I didn’t have it in me to do…anything else anymore…”

“So you stopped. I know other witches who wouldn’t have. You know other robots and aliens who wouldn’t either,” she reminded me. For all the good she seemed to think it did.

“I stopped right before it was too late. When it still was too late,” I made myself remember. “For them, for Monica, for me…”

“Why for you?” Scarlet Witch me went right back to asking short, dumb questions she must already know the answer to. But for some reason, she still wanted to make me suffer by making me say it out loud.

That had to be it.

But…if I had let myself say it out loud or to myself – just myself – long before now…

“Every time I caused…catastrophe, I swore to myself I’d never do it again,” I ignored the choice of words in the middle and stayed focused on the larger, terrible truth. “I’d never let myself do it again. And every time, I let myself do it anyway…from Sokovia to Westview, I keep doing what I keep swearing I’ll never do again…”

“I can kill the ones I love over and over again. But I can _never_ keep that damned promise to do better, to _be_ better...just _one_ time…”

“Then why don’t you stop trying?”

It wasn’t all that different from the other questions my new self kept asking. Yet the weight of it felt so much harder…not crushing, like the weight of everything else. Just more important. More crucial to understanding.

“You’re right. Every time you promise not to destroy people, you break it. So why are you still promising? If you can never keep that promise, why have you kept bothering to try again? If you’re gonna hurt people either way, why not just be the villain the world, witches, bureaucrats, that book and _you_ keep saying you are?”

“If it’s so pointless to try and do better…why are you here trying again?”

**************************************

Of all the truths I’ve denied telling myself…denied drowning myself into, all while drowning anyway…this one is one of the least awful.

And yet still one of the most.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. Not like I’ve been hurt. But Westview was so terrible because that’s exactly what I did…”

And there it was. It took everything just to even begin to put myself back together, over Vision and our children. Yet now that it was finally, somewhat manageable to recover from them…now there was nothing standing between me and that other horrible truth.

Nothing but myself.

“How do I make that better now?” I asked the new me, desperate for someone, anyone – even myself – to give me something to go on.

“Try again.”

That was all she had to say. Just…

The same thing that already didn’t work over and work again. “How is that going to work _this_ time?” I went back to spitting out at me.

“Like it always has. You don’t give up hoping that this time, you’ll get it right. If you didn’t have that kind of hope, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be crying over people you hurt, instead of hurting more of them. You wouldn’t have said goodbye to Westview Vision with hope, instead of just grief. And you would have let go of something long ago that’s even more powerful and begins with G…guilt.”

“We both know what grief really is. But guilt…what perseveres with guilt is something just as powerful as love. What you already admitted you have. The hope of being better than you used to be.”

“And after all your nightmares, all your new victims…it still wasn’t enough to kill that hope. Otherwise, neither of us would be here. So maybe if it survived all that, it’ll be enough for whatever’s next too.”

“Why would it be different now?” I still needed to know and believe.

“Because now you’re not placing your faith in terrorists. Or superheroes…or just one of them. For the first time, the person you get to turn to and draw strength from is…someone you’ve underestimated and dismissed for a long time, but someone you wouldn’t still be standing without. Yourself.”

“Me…through you.” I corrected.

“But still you. Maybe it’s time you gave her a real shot, instead of putting all your eggs in someone else’s basket. You’ve tried everything and everyone else, so maybe that’s worth at least one try. And I…and our new bag of tricks, can make sure it is.”

“Just be nicer to yourself, even if you don’t think you deserve it. You do it long enough, maybe soon you’ll think you do. Just keep doing what really got you here, right here…keep trying.”

**************************************

It couldn’t be that simple. Or that easy. Could it?

Such magical thinking and easy ways out made Westview happen in the first place. This is just me trying to give myself permission to fall for it again…right?

I can’t just trust in myself like that – no matter what form or name she takes – when its myself who ruined so much…

Myself who didn’t stop when I should have…but I _did_ stop.

Myself who didn’t say goodbye the right way when I should have…but I _did_ say goodbye. To all of them.

Myself who had every reason to let Agatha finish me off, as long as I kept the world I wanted…but I didn’t.

Myself who should have become so much worse than Agatha after every loss, every death I caused, every trauma I passed on and every person I changed for the worse. But instead, I’m here.

Still so desperate to find a way to make it right. Or to make sure it never gets any worse again. Still wanting so much not to be the villain I objectively am…and never wanted to be.

But no real villain ever wants to stop being one. Has tried to stop over and over again. After so many failures, they all would have given up by now. But I haven’t.

What does that say about me? Is it…something I should actually listen to? Even when I pulled her out of my own head?

I’ve let my own head drill my failures, my crimes and my losses into my soul without relief. Now, in the one time it’s offering me something different, something reassuring and something better, without any collateral damage attached…just because I might not have the right to take it, does that mean I still shouldn’t try to become someone who does?

Apparently that’s what I’ve done every single time. Picked myself up and counted on others – whether they were the best or worst options imaginable – to get me the rest of the way.

What if this time, it really was okay to trust in someone a little…closer? To give her a shot instead of only holding all her failures against her? Like I once wished someone would do for me after Pietro…a wish someone granted more times than I ever could have imagined? More than he ever should have?

It all sounds so…refreshing when it’s put like that. And its not like there are any other options left.

And yet, they’re all gone and I’m still here, still fighting for something better…and now, so is she. Me.

The Scarlet Witch.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t keep some guards up, though.

“I came here to understand this power…to understand you,” I addressed my other self. “Because if I did…maybe I still couldn’t make what I’ve done better. But I thought if I did…this time I could keep my promise to never cause such pain again. If that’s what you want…if that’s _all_ you want…then I’m in.”

“Good,” the witch didn’t exactly answer. So I needed to be clearer.

“If this is just me giving myself permission to go down another dark path…or if you’re someone else, something else with another agenda…then I will do everything I can to stop it. I may be the Scarlet Witch now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not Wanda anymore. As long as there’s _anything_ redeemable still left in Wanda, like you said there is…I will use that to stop you if you go too far. If you let me go too far.”

“You may be the last chance I have to keep my promises. But that just means I won’t be merciful if you get me to break them again. Now tell me I understand…”

“Oh, trust me…I know you do,” the Scarlet Witch answered a little better. “That book says I’m supposed to be evil, just like the world says you are. But none of them ever took the real Wanda Maximoff into account when they said it. If she’s still there after all this time, then I’m sure we’ll work together just fine. Do I understand?”

By then, it was all hitting me again. Enough that I couldn’t even get a yes out. For all the words both Wandas had used already, we seemed to have finally used them all up.

All I could do was think. Go back to the status quo of getting lost in my own mind. Maybe that meant she’d be lost too. Maybe inflicting that kind of mood on another version of myself is…a small step forward by comparison.

This being from my mind didn’t scold me otherwise, like the voice inside my mind had so many times. Like the memories in my mind scolded me with regret and sorrow every chance they could. Like they hadn’t done quite as frequently as before lately….

Was that what being kinder to myself was supposed to be? How would I know if it was?

It had to be better than all the alternatives so far.

None of them included my mind double coming over to me and slowly pulling me into her arms. That was for sure.

If there was anyone else here, they might have laughed at the sight of…me in a helmet and costume hugging myself in pajamas out in the woods. I might have laughed if I saw it on television, even if it wasn’t trying to make me laugh.

I wasn’t ready to laugh yet. Maybe I could never laugh at a television again after all this. But maybe…

Maybe it was time to do more than cry.

But that didn’t mean there weren’t still some tears to shed.

I felt a few of them down my cheeks when I closed my eyes and rested my head against…my double’s shoulder. That should have been ridiculous enough to make me laugh instead, but I wasn’t there yet.

Instead, I let myself think one more time about who I’d lost for good. Who I hurt to get extra time with them. Who and what I almost unleashed onto the world as a result. All combining to make one more broken promise, and one more descent into darkness I still had no knowledge of escaping for good. No knowledge on how to finally turn it into light, whether it would ever be enough or not.

But when I thought of it, the tears trailed down my cheeks slower than usual. I didn’t cry out into the night again. No red mist was sent out into the wilderness.

Then I felt arms going tighter around me.

This was the fourth imaginary person to hug me since I was alive again. It had still been five years since anyone I hadn’t created had given me one. It might still be years before I could be hugged without thinking about his hugs – any Vision’s hugs.

Yet thinking about them here didn’t destroy me. In fact, when I did, I didn’t think about how I’d never receive them again – but rather, how lucky I was to have ever gotten them in the first place. Such thoughts were getting more and more common as time went on.

For tonight, at least, it didn’t also fill me with regret that I didn’t deserve the ones I got. And the extra ones I hurt hundreds to get.

The one who was hugging me wasn’t trying to make me forget them. This wasn’t a hug of total absolution, like one of his. I still didn’t feel absolved and she knew I still wasn’t asking to be.

I felt comfort in her arms – my arms. Comfort that didn’t mean all was forgiven. But rather…comfort to remind me someone – myself – believed I didn’t have to stay damned. That I could still do better next time, and not just by the low standard of not doing any worse.

That there was still something inside myself that could help me be better. Something still there all this time – and now something that had extra help.

From…a new alter ego that could still be using me like HYDRA, Ultron, Agatha and Hayward used me. Or was just a part of me that wanted to give in and be what everyone else expected of me after all. Actually being better meant I couldn’t rule that out, just because she made me feel better for a little while.

Maybe it meant I didn’t have to rule out the best case scenarios either.

As the last of my tears for tonight fell, I let out a shudder in my projection’s arms, for entirely different reasons. Not out of sadness or regret, but out of visions of hope.

The same kind of hope I gave myself every time I was ready to pick myself up from tragedy. The same kind I felt in those last moments with Westview Vision. The kind where I allowed myself to believe I could do what I came to do here – and then let myself come back there.

I didn’t want to change the world anymore – I’d done it enough. But for one more time – one last time? – I allowed myself to envision I could be part of it. That I wouldn’t hurt it anymore. That there was still a path I couldn’t see yet where I got to live in it again. Whether I got to say hello to Vision again, or even our kids again…maybe that path could still be there with or without them.

If I didn’t want that path so badly, even now, I wouldn’t have forced my way off of so many darker ones time and again. Maybe I would and should never be forgiven for going so far down them anyway.

But maybe this time, with this one last chance…the people of Westview would be the last ones that would never forgive me.

And maybe someday, I wouldn’t need forgiveness from thousands, or millions. Maybe it would be enough to just have a few people again who would never need to forgive me for anything. No matter who they were – as long as they were real.

I should have stopped wanting that after so many wrong turns. I should have given up, accepted I’d never get it, and inflicted pain without regret or remorse like the universe seemed to demand. And yet here I am, still wanting it – not power or love at the rest of the world’s expense – more than ever.

Here I am, for the first time…daring to believe something inside of me is still good enough to help me get it. And not just the something or someone that’s hugging me now.

Maybe it’s time I give that other something more credit. More of a chance. More of an honest shot to be what I still dream it, and me, can be.

It might just be radical, crazy and untested enough to work.

So I let out a deep, shuddering breath. I actually let myself take comfort from…myself as I do. And when I finish…I feel my mouth close and merge into the smallest smile I can make.

Yet it’s the biggest one I’ve made since I can remember. Certainly the first one I’ve made without Vision since I can remember.

Maybe the first one I’ve ever made just from…myself since I was a girl.

And right on that cue, the Wanda that’s holding me finally vanishes.

Gone back into my own mind, or wherever she came from. Gone and leaving me all by myself again.

For the first time since I don’t know when…I don’t mind.

************************************

So I stay. I rest. I live what life there is to live out here. I spend my days at peace, in the cabin or in the woods, and not all of my nights are restless anymore.

At the exact same time, my Scarlet Witch self absorbs every spell, every prophecy and every Hex Agatha’s book has to offer. I feel her power – our power – growing every day, and with every day a little more fear over it is stripped away.

I do my best to maintain my skepticism. To not get carried away and lose myself through any emotion again. To watch out for any signs that this is the one power which could flow evil through me that I can’t come back from. That reality can’t come back from.

The Darkhold predicted it. Agatha had counted on it. The world wouldn’t think twice about fearing it.

Maybe the Scarlet Witch was supposed to bring nothing but destruction. Or maybe that’s because the Darkhold never counted on me. Never counted on someone who brought nothing but destruction – yet still never stopped wanting to bring something more – embodying her. Or it just didn't believe someone like her was capable of offering something more...no matter who was embodying and imprinting on her. If that's what I was doing.

Maybe I never counted on her embodying me. Or counted on anything inside me to embody something more than horror. Not without someone else there beside me.

But now here I am, just me and…me. Working in unison to defy our preordained fates. What we’ve been and what we’re supposed to be. What we want to be instead and what we never want to be again.

Maybe this time it’ll be enough. Maybe this time I have it in me to keep my promise. Maybe Westview will be the last town to suffer because of me after all. And maybe someday I will do more for this world than threaten its existence after all, as I never stopped wanting to do.

And if not…

Then I’ll try again.

_“Mom, help!”_

***************************************

The universe can appear merciful sometimes. It can threaten to put someone over the edge for good, as it already threatened far too many times before. But it can appear merciful by taking her right off the edge of grief and trauma riddled instability yet again.

Or it can just do it for the sake of making everyone wonder if she’ll fall over next year instead.

Or it can threaten to reuse the same old “powerful woman causes damage that threatens the world” plotline for a fourth time – and the same “reality is threatened when a powerful woman wants her family back” plotline for a second time. Just for kicks and clicks.

It doesn’t have to spend nine weeks teasing these same old outcomes for a powerful, grieving woman, pulling back from the brink, only to start teasing them for an entire year straight next time. But sometimes it does. Even when it might be time to try something else instead.

Just for kicks and clicks. But here we are.

So then, let’s get ourselves back up and try again to hope for something better – even after years and countless failed attempts at it.

But even still, we pick ourselves back up and try again.


End file.
